


Shattered Dishes and Duct Tape

by Catsitta



Series: Caution: Fragile [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Companion Piece, Drabble, Drabble Sequence, Drama, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Trying to avoid spoilers in the tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-10 23:21:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20536304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catsitta/pseuds/Catsitta
Summary: Frisk tells a story.Companion Fic | Handle With Care | 100 Word Drabbles





	Shattered Dishes and Duct Tape

**Author's Note:**

> STOP! This fic contains spoilers for Handle With Care, and should not be read before Ch. 128. This fic is a more detailed story told by Frisk that didn't fit into the main story due to the length of the content. It is recommended that you read this before continuing to Ch.130, but it is not required to enjoy the main fic.

**Mountain**  
Once upon a time, a child fell into the belly of a mountain...and they died.

They heard a voice begging them to stay determined, right as their Soul shattered...and then...they refused. They denied their own death. They willed their own resurrection. They bent time itself with the sheer force of their will and put the pieces of their very self back together. Of course, the child didn’t know it at the moment. All they knew was the Voice and pain and the smell of flowers. They woke unaware of their feat. Ignorant to the magic they stirred.

**Monsters**  
It was a grand thing, their adventure after defying death. They discovered a race of creatures banished below the mountain after a war long since forgotten by mankind. Sealed by seven mages, Monsters needed that many human Souls to break the Barrier. The child was only eight. They tried to be kind as the Ruins Guardian begged them to be. But the Monsters were desperate. Not all were merciful. And the child died again, again, and again. Waking like Loading a game. 

They were frightened.

Humans do terrible things when frightened.

They reached the barrier with dust on their hands.

**Reset**  
Have you ever had regrets? Wanted to make amends? The child escaped the Mountain but didn’t break the Barrier. They tried to live a normal life but the Voice remained. Reminding them of what they’d done. Try again, the Voice bid. But the child could only deny their own death, not leap back months in time.

“But we can,” said the Voice. “Let me help.”

With the borrowed Determination of a human that fell long ago, they broke time again. Bent reality. They RESET the world. The child woke in a bed of flowers in the belly of a mountain.

**Prince**  
“Who are you?” the child asked the Voice.

“Chara. The fallen first human. You woke me with your Determination,” the Voice replied.

Chara was the name of the Monster Prince’s human sibling. The one that died from flowers so that the Prince could take their Soul and fetch six more beyond the Barrier. 

“I was a Mage...but unlike you, I cannot refuse death. I only had one chance, the RESETS making it possible to set everything up. The situation perfect.”

“And then you died.”

"Then I died. My sacrifice spoiled by my brother’s cowardice. Well, it was until you.”

**Loops**  
The child was only eight years old. Not an angel. Not a demon. Not a savior or vanquisher. Children crave happy endings to their stories. They can also be cruel in their ignorance. So they Saved Monsterkind. They Loaded and RESET until they got their perfect ending. 

It should have been enough.

But they were curious. They were foolish. They were young. 

When they bored of their happy ending, they started over. They...experimented. There were no consequences. Or so they thought. Reality lost all meaning. It became a game. The child emptied the Underground again...in a different way.

**Sideways**  
Mercy or violence, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Nobody mattered. They ceased to persist forward, always looping back. Until it went sideways. RESETS, it seems, are not like Loads. Time isn’t bending. Space is. An imperfect jump landed the child in a mixed up world. In another jump, it was Chara in their place. In yet another, neither existed...but someone did. 

No barrier. No war. No fallen humans. 

But the Prince had a brother. A human brother full of Determination.

One who Dreamed of the child and Chara. One who Dreamed of many things, including two children left adrift.

**Unity**  
Kris was a unifying piece in a puzzle that the child didn’t even know was broken. They could Will things. Dream things. Make the unreal a reality. Big things never lasted, but the small things...those stuck easier. The child was tired. They were lost so long. They lived a lifetime over days in repeat. They wanted their happy ending again. One where all three of them could live together. Alive and whole.

So the children forged their happy ending through sheer force of will.

Found the best start, and bent it to their whims. 

They started out as siblings.

**Family**  
Three orphaned kids in need of a home. A family lost they could barely remember. A maternal Toriel looking to foster. It was perfect! Except when it wasn’t. They didn’t go to Toriel. LOAD. Kris was separated from them. LOAD. Toriel missed the appointment. LOAD. 

Loops upon loops. 

Until they got it right. 

Every action was calculated. Every mistake rectified. Chara and Kris would have their mother and brother back. And the child...they would have a family. There was a reason they fell into a hole that day. Children with happy families don’t go climbing mountains on a whim.

**Hands**  
The child knew most of the Monsters here from past timelines. Their names and quirks and the betrayal they wore when they crumbled to dust. Most. But not all. Sans visited the Dreemurs, alert and enthusiastic, babbling about research with a distantly familiar stranger that spoke with his hands. Over dinner, introductions were made with whoopie cushions and bad puns. The child, curious Pandora as they ever were...asked Sans about his brother.

“brother?” Sans blinked, as if his mind was stuttering over gaps that shouldn’t exist. It rectified it with humor. He elbowed Gaster, “hey dadio, you keepin’ secrets?”

**Cracks**  
They messed up. The child wasn’t sure where, but the plan fell through. They weren’t being adopted. They were being separated. They wouldn’t be denied their happy ending! Loops upon loops. They remet old friends. Repeated past conversations. 

Nobody was supposed to remember but them.

But Sans looked at them strangely after their fourth introduction. He was sweaty and his smile stressed after the sixth. The child didn’t understand why. The child didn’t understand a lot of things. Such as why Gaster and he started arguing. Or why Sans took to rubbing his sternum as if his very Soul hurt.

**Brother**  
Things finally went perfectly.

The adoption went through. Time moved forward. And as if the universe wished to correct the silly flaw of a brotherless Sans, Gaster introduced a newborn Papyrus. He was adorable. Though the child didn’t understand why the Monsters seemed so confused or concerned. He was a healthy babybones. 

All was well for a time...until it wasn’t.

Out of everyone, none of the children expected Asriel to be the one caught in the crossfire of a Monster hate group. They hadn’t come this far to lose someone they started this journey through reality trying to save.

**HoPe**  
“please stop,” Sans begged of them. “i don’t know how you’re doing it, but please, you have to stop.”

An anomaly. Then again, the Sanses of past timelines always had an uncanny way of “knowing” things.

He pulled the children aside after dinner, shaking, so distressed he activated an Encounter. Gaster didn’t even attend. There was something very, very amiss. Sans kept clutching the front of his shirt. The child CHECKED him.

**Sans  
** 1HP  
*He is Falling

“Does anyone else know?” Chara demanded.

The question was as good as an answer for Sans.

“a coworker. he...he has this machine.”

**Promise**  
Nothing good ever came of breaking their promise. It was a lesson hard learned after another near perfect Run gone awry, a vow made to Sans to stop toying with time. The child was tired. They wanted to see their future too. And Sans was hurting. He was hurting so badly. 

Sans didn’t show up to the usual dinner.

Nor did Gaster.

Another loop around and he arrived, looking dead to the world.

“i don’t think i can do it again. if you care about me at all, stop this. i can’t lose him again. don’t make me lose him.”

**Continue**  
The child made a choice that day. They would continue. Live with the consequences of their actions. Make an attempt at normality. It was difficult. Their relationship with Sans fragile. His fallout with Gaster was loud (who would have expected Sans to be the one to reveal Papyrus’ true parent?) and he sequestered himself away.

“just leave me alone, Frisk,” he told the child when they found him.

“I can help you with Paps. I owe you that much after everything.”

Babysitting to make amends for ruining his life.

It was like trying to repair shattered dishes with duct tape.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading~ 
> 
> NOTES:  
+Each of these little blurbs are 100 words like the main fic~
> 
> +Frisk's story sets up Handle with Care's premise as an odd canon divergence/AU where the main events of the game did happen. All routes are canon. BUT! Sometimes RESETS don't land Frisk back at the start of "their" underground. 
> 
> +It is implied that Frisk has to die to LOAD, but can RESET anytime thanks to Chara
> 
> +Kris' abilities are a little more obscure, but relate to 'Dreaming' and 'Making/Seeing Futures'. With small changes 'sticking' better than big ones.
> 
> +Sans' trust of Frisk after these events was very, very hard won, and Sans prefers to 'pretend' this whole reset fiasco was never a thing.
> 
> +Aka: Sans trusts Frisk as a babysitter and doesn't think they're a bad person. He just doesn't trust them not to do their time and reality warping thing. Also, when the kid can bend known rules of physics, they're probably the best babysitter you can get.


End file.
